Exploring Passenger and Service Elevator Plans and Elevations in Detail

Analyzing Elevator Plans and Elevations in Detail for Architectural Insight

Explore the intricacies of analyzing plans and elevations of service and passenger elevators in large constructions. This article provides a detailed walkthrough of the document layout and architectural details, emphasizing the importance of dimensional consistency and referencing.

Key Insights

  • The article focuses on examining a non-standardly organized document featuring plans and details for service and passenger elevators. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the order of details, which can differ based on the architect who prepared the document.
  • Throughout the document, dimensioning is anchored to the structural grid. This is critical for maintaining consistency across various plans, sections, and details, and aids in understanding the relations between different parts of the building.
  • The document inspection reveals the significance of referencing and coordinating across pages and images. For instance, an enlarged plan might be referenced on a separate page, or the same section could be represented on multiple levels. Understanding these links is crucial for a correct reading of the document.

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Let's spend a few minutes looking at the Passenger and Service Elevator in Large Plans and Elevations. We see a number of plans and a number of details. The document is organized where detail 1 is here, then 2, then 3,4, 5,6, 7,8, 9,10, and 11.

This is not the standard order in which pages are typically laid out. Most normally it would be 1,2, 3,4, 5,6, 7,8, 9,10, and then 11. So standard layout starts in the top right and goes down and then it works its way to the left.

But we're working with documents prepared by another architect. So let's zoom into area 1. You can see that we have an enlarged plan that's referenced in this area right here. You see that we have a partial section that goes through the elevators down to here, and that's on page A713, image 2. There's a section that goes here looking up again on A713.

There's a section, image 4, on A461 that's cut here looking that way. Dimensioning is once again anchored to the structural grid. So here's one of the grids and it shows the distance down to the face of the masonry.

Since this grid is anchoring from here up to here, these other subsequent dimensions are hitching up to that same point down here. We have the callouts that come from the legend. We go up a level.

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Again, we're anchored to the grid. We have the same section that was referenced below. There's a wall section that's right here.

A section through the elevator area over in here. A wall section here. A detail referenced there.

Again, the structural column and grid. Dimensions anchored from here up to there. These guys are going down.

An enlarged reference plan right in through here and another through here. And I can see that this enlarged plan is image 13 on page A720. So you can see the similarities.

Again, we have some revision bubbles that are going on here. These changes were made with revision number 1. Number 5, this is at the roof level. So again, I have an exterior elevation which is image 8 right here on sheet A711.

And we are on sheet A711. We'll see image 8, image 7, and image 10 on this sheet. We have a section, section number 1, that goes across the elevators.

And again, this is the same section that we're seeing on other levels. This is the actual roof of the elevator. This is the datum callout for the elevation at the top of the elevator.

So here is exterior elevation number 7. You see that we have a dimension to the top of the low parapet. We have a section that will go through this wall on page A713. The side elevation and the opposite elevations.

And then we have a detail at the core wall typical. And this is detail 11 on A711. And we're seeing that same image right over here.

So all of the images are relatively similar. The important thing is dimensional consistency, dimensional referencing, to make sure that entire vertical sections are shown on all of the images. So it's a really good presentation.

And I hope you can spend a little bit more time looking at it in some more detail for yourself.

photo of Al Whitley

Al Whitley

AutoCAD and Blueprint Reading Instructor

Al was the Founder and CEO of VDCI | cadteacher for over 20 years. Al passed away in August of 2020. Al’s vision was for the advancement and employment of aspiring young professionals in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries.

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